Alice springs points to need for a bold new way

The night-time curfew has been lifted in Alice Springs for a second time but the problems that led to its imposition remain. The admission by Northern Territory Police Commissioner Michael Murphy that there were currently no reasonable grounds to extend the public order declaration underscores the fact curfews can be a circuit-breaker but are not a long-term solution. For that, it is necessary to confront the issues of community dysfunction that allow law and order to decline to the point that community safety is compromised and emergency measures are required.

These issues must first be acknowledged before they can be addressed. Few people outside Alice Springs and some remote communities can appreciate the state of affairs that has challenged residents and the authorities in the world-famous central desert town for many years. The latest public order declaration that effectively locked down the Alice Springs central business district for three nights followed a weekend of violence that included a brawl involving 80 people, a knife attack on a 42-year-old woman, the robbery of a service station and the assault of four off-duty police officers. There was a further outbreak of daytime mass violence during the curfew period that had to be broken up by police.

The breakdown of law and order in the red centre has reignited debate about the same issues that led to the Howard government’s intervention into Indigenous communities to protect vulnerable children and women in September 2007 but have not gone away. Opposition Indigenous affairs spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price spoke an obvious truth this week that the focus needed to be on underlying issues facing youth in the Territory. Interviewed this week, Senator Nampijinpa Price said: “The lives of these children need to be looked at much closer … Indigenous children in my community, throughout the Northern Territory, experience the highest rates of domestic and family violence, and child sexual abuse.” Spurred on by the failed voice to parliament referendum, Senator Nampijinpa Price has taken up the fight for a reconsideration of the way in which the issues of social dysfunction in remote communities are understood and addressed.

For many, Senator Nampijinpa Price is continuing the rights-and-responsibilities agenda championed for decades by Cape York Indigenous pioneer Noel Pearson. The Cape York Institute founder and author of Our Right to take Responsibility popularised understanding of the destructive forces of what he called “sit-down money”. He rightly said in 2006 that people do not become dependent upon sit-down money unless there is someone willing to hand it out. Mr Pearson identified that not only cash handouts but also services can displace responsibility from individuals, families and communities, and place it into the hands of the deliverers. Every government payment, service and directive takes something away from individuals.

Senator Nampijinpa Price has laid out her vision for an “advancement movement” in Indigenous affairs, in which welfare-dependent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people do the jobs in their communities currently done by fly-in, fly-out workers, and “meet the standards other Australians are expected to meet”. Given events in Alice Springs, her insights gleaned from first-hand experience could not be more welcome. She has called for an end to an implied acceptance of cultural payback, arranged marriage, apportioning tragedies and mishaps to sorcery and other practices that are “anathema to modern culture”.

Senator Nampijinpa Price expands on her “second way” agenda in a landmark essay to be published on Saturday in a commemorative magazine to mark the 60th anniversary of The Australian. The essay gives fresh purpose to a discussion that must be had in the wake of the failed voice referendum and the years of failure to make meaningful advances on closing the gap on Indigenous disadvantage. As Paige Taylor reported on Tuesday, Senator Nampijinpa Price says “we know where the gap is – it is 20 per cent of the 3 per cent”, in the Northern Territory. “It’s remote Indigenous Australians, many of whom do not have English as a first language. We already know that we can either fix or exacerbate that by school attendance.”

As opposition Indigenous affairs spokeswoman, Senator Nampijinpa Price is working with Peter Dutton on policies to reset the debate. The “second way” will no doubt be incendiary to many who support the established approach favoured by progressive forces, many of whom are far divorced from the realities of life on the ground. This is not least because she challenges the contemporary adherence to postcolonial ideals. Senator Nampijinpa Price is brave enough to say publicly that Indigenous affairs must be broken free of the “noble savage” approach that celebrates a false ideal of pre-settlement Indigenous life. In her view, traditional culture is romanticised by those who do not live it, while reinvention of the culture has become an industry in the name of reconciliation for the purpose of political influence.

Senator Nampijinpa Price enters the debate with force at a critical time. Her views cannot simply be dismissed as a new chapter in the culture wars. They deserve deep consideration.